B’nai B’rith International is deeply dismayed by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s comments attributing the Paris terror attacks to desperation born out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though the Swedish government has denied Wallstrom’s intention to link Friday’s horrific events with the Middle East conflict, she clearly invoked the Palestinian situation in attempting to explain the attacks in Paris.

“To counteract the radicalization we must go back to the situation such as the one in the Middle East, in which not at the least the Palestinians see that there is no future; we must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence,” Wallstrom said on Swedish television.

Any misguided attempts to link the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists amount to a justification of terror on the basis of frustration with events in the region. Such facile and wrongheaded explanations only impede the peace process by excusing violence and failing to acknowledge the deep ideological commitment of radical extremists to defeating the world’s democratic nations.

It is vital that Sweden and other democratic governments dedicate themselves to defeating radical extremist terrorist groups that have proven themselves to be enemies of the civilized world. It is also essential that those countries remain clearheaded about the motivation of radical Islamists and avoid harmful and false rationalizations of the terrorists’ motives.